Rot-Weiss Oberhausen

Founded 1904 is a fairly pesky and annoying club. They were implicated in
the scandals of the early 70s, although not with a smoking gun like
Bielefeld or Offenbach. RWO spent a long time rebuilding their reputation.

In December of 1904, Emschertaler SV and Oberhausener TV
1873 got together to form Oberhausener SV. In January 1923, the
Duisburg club Styrumer BV merged, and the club was now known as
SV 1904 Oberhausen-Styrum. This however only lasted for some 6
months, as many members left to form 1.FC Mülheim-Styrum. The
remainder stayed on, and renamed the club to SC Rot_Weiß
Oberhausen in 1934. During the Nazi era, RWO was a decent club in the
Gauliga
Niederrhein, but that division was essentially owned by Fortuna
Düsseldorf, so there wasn't much to achieve.

After WWII, RWO eventually established itself in the top regional Oberliga
West, and was a founding memeber of the new Regionalliga West in 1963.
In the early 1970s, RWO played 3 seasons in the Bundesliga, before finally
dropping in 1973. Basically, it was a workhorse team of no-names,
although Lothar Kobluhn did manage to win the scoring title for the
Bundesliga one season. There
were accusations of attempted bribery to sully the name of the club. The
DFB penalized RWO 5 points (on 2 pt scale) before the start of the 72/73
season, which was essentially automatic relegation. The next season they
finished runner-up in the Regionalliga West, but crashed out in the
promotion playoffs. 1975 saw a disaster in the new 2.Liga Nord and
relegation down to the 3rd division.

The elevator ride continued as after a few seasons in the 3rd, RWO was
back in the 2nd division for about 5 seasons in the 1980s. However, once
again the taint of scandal brought a close to the chapter, as financial
difficulties led to the DFB denying a professional license. By 1990,
RWO had fallen to the 4th division.

Club management started to clean things up, and the club stabilized, so by
1998, they were back at the 2nd level.
The 1998-99 season started off poorly,
and the pundits prediction of
a quick drop to the 3rd division looke pretty obvious, with RWO dead last.
But then a new coach, Alexander Ristic, managed to turn things around, and
the team put together a great unbeaten run that carried them out of the
hole. Although things remained tight, there was little doubt they would
stay up, despite a weak finish. As things stabilized, it's not
unbelievable to think that RWO may once again make an appearance in the
top flight. The 5th place finish in 2004 seemed to indicate that.
But the 2.Liga is merciless, and if you miss the boat, don't be
surprised if you miss everything...Oberhausen was relegated in
2005.

Oberhausen started another elevator ride, once again climbing into the 2nd division by 2010, but quickly fell back to the 4th level a couple
of years later. It's safe to say that RWO will remain one of the prime examples of elevator squads in Germany for the near future.

Niederrheinstadion. Capacity: 21,318 (4,039
seats) Built in 1926. From the visiting side, you can look into the
harbour. The advertising board was apparently bought from Bayer Leverkusen
when they refurbished their stadium.

3 German internationals. Willy Jürissen (6 caps in th 30s),
Jürgen Sundermann (1 cap in 1960). Also Erich
Juskowiak, from the 50s, capped once for RWO, another 30 for
Düsseldorf. Midfielder Lothar Kobluhn sensationally won
the scoring title in 1971 with 24 goals - 12 in the last 8 games to
save RWO by 1 goal.